Who wouldn’t want to visit Hogsmeade or Hobbiton...but perhaps not Prentisstown or Cittàgazze? Shane Hegarty picks the best and worst towns in children’s fiction
Seventeen years ago I was standing in the small New Zealand town of Greymouth, in drizzle, waiting for a train. Even the most beautiful parts of the world have their drizzly days, and as I stood there urging the train to come chugging down those tracks, it occurred to me that the town’s name neatly matched the mood. For some reason, that lodged in my head. I didn’t realise it then, but I had a title before I had a story.
Over a decade later, I found the story: the only child of the only Legend Hunter living in the only town on earth still invaded by monsters of myth. I gave the town’s name a twist, so that it would be Darkmouth that was riddled with portals to another world. But the title needed to be more than just a pun. And the town needed to have more than just character, it had to be a character in these books.
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